The most accurate and adequate in-flight decisions can be made if the pilot has up-to date environment information as provided over the Aeronautical Information Services/Meteorological Information Services (AIS/MET) Data Link. To have such information, a significant portion of data needs to be transmitted repeatedly from a ground station to an aircraft using a satellite data connection. The size of data directly affects the time and the cost for its transmission. Therefore, the pilot typically tries to reduce the data size by limiting either the number of products to be transmitted, or the coverage area.
The most significant savings without losing relevant information can be made if the data coverage is limited only for flight-affecting areas. To do so, the pilot has to select the area of interest (AOI). The application used by the pilot to make this selection needs to make compromises between offering (1) a simple interface to do the AOI selection fast and easy, or (2) a complex interface to perform the selection with precision to reduce the amount of data transmitted to the aircraft.
It might seem like an automatic process that selects the data coverage area to be limited to the flight path of the aircraft would provide a simple solution to this compromise in conventional applications. However, this process would not provide the pilot with sufficient information as other potential significant areas would be omitted from the data coverage area thereby increasing the risk to the aircraft, crew, passengers and cargo.